Reviews
Beavis and Butt-Head (1993)
I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I really like this show!
Okay, I admit it. I am a closet Beavis & Butthead fan. Well, actually, not all that closeted, but when I tell people I enjoy the show, sometimes they just don't get it. Some of them say, "But it's just stupid! It's just two morons laughing and being crude all the time!"
Well, I thought so too, before I ever watched the show. I had heard of them; I would occasionally see B & B pop up on an MTV awards show and receive lots of laughter and applause - the laughter and applause of recognition. I knew they were popular but I didn't "get it." Then, part of the way through the first episode I watched, I "got it." The reason Beavis & Butthead is so funny is that it does an extremely dead-on accurate job of portraying a very real aspect of teenage males that had been completely overlooked in a lot of previous television.
I can even remember the exact moment I "got it": Beavis and Butthead were watching a video by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and adding their usual commentary, and when the video ended and the name of the band appeared on the screen, Butthead read their name out loud. And when I heard the tone of voice he used, it hit me. It's that sarcastic, detached, "I'm so cool" kind of voice that teenage boys use constantly - even for such a banality as a simple declarative statement about a band's name.
And of course, what makes B & B's sarcastic detached cockiness all the more ironic is that they have extremely passive and uneventful lives: they spend all their time "hanging out" and doing the same stupid stuff, yet they somehow (well, Butthead especially) consider themselves qualified to put on this jaded cynical act. Everything they do is as observers. They see sex and rock music on TV, they think and talk about sex and rock music all the time, and they've never had sex or played rock music. And the irony never hits them. They're somehow this weird combination of innocence and jadedness at the same time, and this, combined with their passive observer nature, makes Beavis and Butthead an extremely dead-on accurate portrayal of adolescent males.
Of course Beavis and Butthead are exaggerations of teenage males, but nevertheless I find them a rather refreshing change from the portrayals of teenagers in shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson's Creek, who seem as articulate, poised, and self-confident as a bunch of sophisticated 28-year-olds, and who do not ring true to me at all.
The Simpsons (1989)
The greatest television show of all time
What more can I possibly say about a TV show that has already been praised to death? I was 15 when the Simpsons first aired and I'm 25 now. I've seen every single episode, and I'd have to say it's a rare combination of factors that come together to make The Simpsons the best show ever.
It's a very clever and intelligent show - they never dumb anything down - and as creator Matt Groening has remarked, "The Simpsons is a show that rewards paying attention." There are always enough obscure pop-culture references or subtle background gags to ensure that the second, third, or tenth viewing of an episode will find you noticing something you hadn't before.
In the early days of The Simpsons, they derived a large part of their popularity from the everyday, down-to-earth, unglamorous, average-blue-collar-slob aspect of the Simpson family. Homer is lazy and doesn't like his job, Bart doesn't excel at school, the plastic ketchup bottle they use at the dinner table makes that farting sound, and so on. This aspect of the program contrasts it with popular 80's family sitcoms such as The Cosby Show which always featured impossibly well-functioning families who got along a little too perfectly and usually learned a neat little lesson at the end of each episode. An early tag-line for The Simpsons said that they "put the Fun back in Dysfunctional."
Perhaps this blue-collar-slobness by itself is nothing shockingly original - think of previous TV shows such as Roseanne, Married with Children, All in the Family, The Honeymooners - but the Simpsons doesn't stop there. This show is extremely densely packed with jokes - everything from cerebral witticisms and sly satire to Homer falling down and going "D'oh!" Because it's a cartoon, the writers can get away with surreal gags such as the time Homer tells a joke which falls flat, after which a long silence happens which is punctuated by a single tumbleweed rolling through the Simpson's living room.
There are just too many things to mention about The Simpsons. It can be touching occasionally; more often the viewers are treated to an unequalled cavalcade of obscure references, surreal sight gags, wacky adventures, self-mocking irony... The list goes on and on. Just watch it, else you're missing out on one of the most important elements of 1990's popular culture.
Armageddon (1998)
Should have been an hour shorter
The first 90 minutes of this movie were slightly better than I expected; it gives every promise of being the fun, flashy, escapist, visually impressive, adrenaline-inducing action flick we're looking for. But it just goes on far too long. There are only so many times that another unforeseen mishap can befall the characters, only to have them succeed at the last possible moment, before it becomes laughable and we stop caring. Also, the "emotional" moments have all the subtlety of a foghorn. If only they had pared off about 40 to 60 minutes, we could have had a perfectly decent action movie.
American Pop (1981)
At-times-corny-hodgepodge, yet quirky, offbeat, and strangely touching
I won't go so far as to call this movie a masterpiece, but I do have a special weakness for Ralph Bakshi for some reason, and I enjoyed this film despite the awkward non-uniform animation (involving heavy use of rotoscoping), the corniness of some moments, and the bizarre contexts into which some popular songs are placed (e.g. a Bob Dylan song being composed by some fictional character on a bus, and - as another reviewer commented - a Bob Seger song somehow being considered punk).
Nevertheless, there are several things I enjoyed about "American Pop". Rather than a single individual, the "protagonist" is a "familial line"; one could even say the protagonist of this movie is a "creative spark" that passes from father to son. It was interesting how we were shown that the same creative spark which expresses itself through popular music is intimately intertwined with the sexual urge - and hence the urge to "keep the spark alive" by passing it to the next generation.
It's also very interesting to see a movie about popular music as a whole throughout the twentieth century, as opposed to being confined to one particular decade. In fact, on one level, "American Pop" is simply an entertaining history of twentieth century popular music, a history which is embellished by the presence of four characters which represent different points in that century insofar as they "could have written" the songs of their particular time.
Finally, one of my favourite aspects of "American Pop" is alluded to by the second word of the title: "Pop". "Pop" is, of course, short for "popular", and in this film we see that these characters' choice to express themselves via the medium of popular music (rather than, say, classical music or classical painting) is very closely wound up with the fact that these are all quite down-to-earth, everyday types of people who sometimes experience the grittier side of life.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to give "American Pop" either a 7 or an 8.